Quite why is beyond me.

Last Tango In Halifax is winding down now with the third series possibly being the last. I think it would be dented as would Death In Paradise. Happy Valley would be counterprogramming but would also suffer in my view. But with Downton slipping slightly maybe they would do well opposite Downton.

Sounds interesting. Returnable? Does Ecclestone ever return with anything?

ITV Encore's weekly reach fell to a new low of 884,000, its worst performance since launching on June 9.

The leading commercial broadcaster's pay venture suffered further embarrassment as it fell behind BT Sport 2, Cartoon Network +1, Discovery Science, Good Food, History +1, Horror Channel, Magic TV, MTV Shows, Nat Geo Wild and Sony TV, to name a few relatively minor players that had a greater impact on audiences.

Just be a waste though wouldnt it? Like it would be if ITV tried something similar against Sherlock/CTM etc. They both dont do it for a reason.

Probably would have cost them money.

It would certainly make things easier for us interested in ratings instead of having to play guess the ratings for much of the time.

To be honest I have not even thought about it since I watched Broadchurch in its first week.

Can't see this lasting very long. Its a waste and pointless exercise that has taken some of ITV3 content away from it and put it away on a lesser watched channel

Broadchurch would have done good business on ITV3, as does DA when its repeated.

They should've put more effort into commissions on ITV3 to expand the channel.

The info on that site is out of date anyhow as it shows MTV Shows instead of MTV Music.

It's cost them respect from a lot of people who don't realise the ITV1 figures are up to 1.5m short of the full figure.

Concerning ITV have two new channels when the focus should definitely be growing the existing ones.

ITV, ITV2, ITV3, ITV4, ITVBe and ITV Encore? Cripes, that's a weird strategy especially considering how similar ITV2 and ITVBe are, and ITV3 and ITV Encore technically are.

BBC have announced an adaptation of John le Carré's The Night Manager, someone mentioned this the other day and I assumed it would be BBC Two but it's actually BBC One who have commissioned it. No mention of the casting but earlier reports said Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston will star.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/lat.../night-manager

Although Downton isn't exactly pre-occupied with the political realities of the era in which its set so there seems little upside to moving it to a pre-war period. Plus there's the whole aging the cast by a decade issue that brings up. I argue that perhaps the best thing for the show going forward might be for Fellowes to reduce his role and bring in a couple of fresh writers who might stand a better chance of injecting some new human drama into the show.


I suspect someone *cough*TheDailyMail*cough* might notice and disapprove if Family Guy repeats became a nightly fixture on either BBC1 or BBC2.


I doubt its going anywhere. The (sort of) subscription model its tied to makes it far too valuable a prospect for ITV to abandon. The channel simply needs better management. It desperately needs some form of original content that can be promoted and talked about. Its incredibly hard to get viewers excited about a channel that's prime time schedule this week seems to be made up entirely of Poirot repeats. As we're seeing its a tiny number of people that are going to actively seek that channel out. The schedule needs more variety and interest even if its only more variety and interest in the form of repeats from the ITV back catalogue. I'd probably give The Americans a repeat run and maybe shift first run episodes of season three to the channel next year. They also probably need to bite the bullet and buy in some imports for the channel to give it some original content to work with.

When something is seen as bombproof it is usually avoided. ITV delayed the start of Mr Selfridge earlier this year until Sherlock finished. But when a programme looks weaker a channel will try their luck opposite it.

I can definitely see the logic behind ITVBe, as it seems to be a dumping ground for crap that rates decently but is a bit embarrassing. If it means ITV2 goes up in quality then I'm all for it.

I am all for ITVBe if it means ITV2 will be a lot better, Having things like TOWIE on freeview channel 6 is embarrassing for ITV.

A little bit of nostalgia for you! We may (well some) think BBC1 is poor on Sundays at present, but take a look at this clip from July 1985. And we are moaning about summer telly from this year!!!

Includes a repeat of a 1985 Good Friday drama! (Shown three months before!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD-9FeIFNlI

Why is it embarrassing? These are clearly popular shows.


I dunno Drugwatch doesn't sound too bad on paper. The rest maybe not so much.

It is due to ITV HD regionality being different in part to ITV SD regionality and therefore the two channels having to be counted separately in order that commercials are given the correct audiences and advertisers aren't charged for commercials that weren't watched by their audience.

I posted along these lines a while back.

http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showp...postcount=2414

An article in the Radio Times on Grantchester has a paragraph that is written very similar to something Samuel might write about BBC drama.

'Grantchester is a new six-part ITV drama that ticks a lot of the boxes that makes a ratings hit. It offers nostalgia, pretty countryside and the colleges of Cambridge University provide an elegant backdrop........................'

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2014-...at-in-the-fens

Ticking a lot of boxes sounds a bit like what was said about Our Zoo though. I shall record this tonight and am looking forward to it more than when I thought it was going to be Agatha Christie meets Heartbeat as the tone of the trailers looks nothing like that. With a good slot first episode should be over 5m then it will depend whether its actually any good.

Yes, that's exactly what it reminded me of.

The Telegraph: "looks and smells like a hit"

In fairness, the writer did point out that it felt like something more appropriate for a Sunday night, which looks a rather astute observation with hindsight.

Better for Xfactor there. I thought yesterday's show was boring preferred Saturday's which had the lower ratings. Great ratings for strictly too

Thank you. Channels 4 and 5 are also regionalised for advertising, well macro-regionalised. What happens with their HD channels: is there only one HD version on all platforms in all macro-regions?